Alexander Waugh, 1963-2024

Last year, having somehow ‘missed’ the deaths of several people I knew or had worked with many years ago, I vowed to read the obituary columns every day.

See: Gone but not forgotten.

Today, flicking through the Telegraph obituaries online, I read that Alexander Waugh, son of Auberon Waugh and grandson of Evelyn Waugh, died on Monday of prostate cancer.

Before his death in 2001, his father was a great friend of Forest. I had never met Alexander but five years ago I invited him to attend our 40th anniversary dinner in London.

He couldn’t come but replied as follows:

I am very sorry that your extremely kind and friendly letter has only just come to my attention, and even sorrier that I am unable to come to your 40th anniversary dinner. It was very generous of you to seek me out and invite me and I am touched to learn that Forest still remembers my father with amiable affection.

Wishing your organisation all happiness and prosperity and ultimate success against the tyrannies of Nanny Stateism. May we meet in the near future. With all warmest salutations for your 40th anniversary! Vivat Forest!

Thanking him, I asked if we could read that last paragraph to our 200 guests, to which he responded:

Yes of course read it out, with plenty of gusto if you can. Sounds like it will be a very jolly do!

Regrettably, we never did meet, and I feel rather sad about that.

His father, you see, was a huge inspiration to me when I was young and an aspiring journalist. I even produced a student magazine inspired by Private Eye (for which he wrote a wonderfully fearless and acerbic column), so it was an enormous thrill to finally meet him when I became director of Forest.

I was a big fan of his grandfather too, hence my reply when Alexander informed me that he was editing a 43-volume scholarly edition of Evelyn Waugh’s complete works:

What a mammoth task you have undertaken. The Loved One remains one of my favourite books because it introduced me to your grandfather’s work and encouraged me to read his earlier novels. That in turn resulted in one of the very few dissertations I enjoyed writing as a schoolboy!

It’s true. In my final year at school my English dissertation covered the satirical novels of Evelyn Waugh and Michael Frayn, and I can honestly say it was the only time I genuinely took pleasure from researching an essay or dissertation.

So although I didn’t know him, Alexander Waugh’s death feels strangely personal to me.

It has also prompted me to buy his 2004 book, Fathers and Sons: The Autobiography of a Family which is said to cover five generations of his family.

Curiously, Evelyn Waugh was 62 when he died in 1966. Auberon Waugh was 61 when he died in 2001, and now his son, Alexander, has died, aged 60.

My condolences to his family.

See also: Auberon Waugh and the Academy Club and The world of Auberon Waugh

Telegraph obituary - Alexander Waugh, author of an acclaimed study, Fathers and Sons, and Shakespeare sceptic